Tarawa Burial Registry

RESEARCH

A searchable list of American military fatalities in the Tarawa atoll, from Operation GALVANIC through the end of the war.

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Search For A Serviceman

One of the greatest challenges facing Tarawa researchers – especially those working on personnel recovery – is coming to grips with the confounding multiplicity of burial reports.There is no single authoritative list among the original records: conflicting burial details, misspelled names, duplications, omissions, and other clerical mistakes may be found in any source the researcher cares to examine. The Navy’s burial roster, which reported the location of memorial graves instead of actual burials added another layer of confusion that persists to this day. And finally, post-war search and recovery efforts, as well as recent archaeological findings, have also revealed errors in original burial reports.

The Tarawa Burial Registry includes the names of over one thousand American personnel killed in Operation GALVANIC, as well as those who died during the occupation of the Tarawa and Apamama atolls. The information presented here is drawn largely from the 2nd Marine Division Graves Registration report completed in January 1944, with additional data from Marine Corps and Navy casualty cards, Individual Deceased Personnel Files, unit and ship muster rolls, and post-war exhumation reports.

Reading The Registry

While the Registry corrects many of the minor errors and discrepancies between these records, it can only be as good as its source material. The information presented here should be considered the best representation of lengthy research, not a source of ultimate truth.

The content in the Registry has been simplified slightly for ease of comprehension.

• Any cemetery with multiple names on original records now has a single designation. (See “Cemetery Names by Source” below.)
• “Disposition Unknown” means an individual whose death was confirmed, but burial location not known to Graves Registration.
• “Missing In Action” means an individual whose death was suspected but not formally confirmed when the GRS list was released in early 1944.
• “Missing, not reported” means an individual whose death was not known at the time – often they were presumed wounded and evacuated to an unknown destination. These men were declared dead in November 1944. (Note that they did not have memorial markers on Betio.)

The table defaults to display by date of loss, but can be sorted using the filters in the top row.

• Lost: the last date that the individual was known to be alive.
• Graves Registration: Burial information (if any) reported by the 2nd Marine Division GRS in 1944.
• Monument Cemetery: One of four “beautified” Navy memorials. These names appeared on painted plaques.
• Memorial Cemetery: Location of an individual memorial marker (if any).
• Actual Burial: Where the individual’s remains were recovered, if known.
• Lone Palm: Where the individual was buried by the 604th Quartermaster Graves Registration Company in 1946.
• X Number: All unidentifiable remains were assigned an “x number” for administrative purposes.
• Identified Date: The date an individual’s identity was confirmed, ranging from 1946 to the present day.